Madam Thorne's limousine, now filled with shopping bags overflowing with absurdly expensive garments, whisked Anya away from the boutique. The Matriarch, sensing Anya's deep exhaustion and confusion, insisted on bringing her to a neutral location rather than back to Lucien's controlling penthouse.
"Jasmine and wet earth," Madam Thorne murmured, settling back into the rich leather seat. "That was her favourite spot in the old garden, wasn't it, little one?"
Anya stared at the Matriarch. "Ma'am, I don't know what you mean by 'she.' And I've never been in a garden like that. My garden had rusty tools and dying weeds."
"Nonsense," the Matriarch waved a dismissive hand. "You have the heart of a Qilin. Not a cat. Lucien's grief always skewed his vision toward the feline."
Anya blinked, struggling to process the ancient, mythical term. "A Qilin? Like… a Chinese unicorn? That's not even a real animal!"
"Ah, but you were real to us," the Matriarch smiled sadly. "The most beloved, slightly magical guardian of the Thorne family fortune. You were the one who always knew where the best fortunes were hidden. Now, we are going to see Dr. Zuo. He's our eccentric science genius—and your first true friend."
The Eccentric Science Genius
The limousine pulled up to a discreet, heavily fortified building on the outskirts of the city. The sign read: "THORNE BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE: DIVISION 7."
Inside, the atmosphere was a chaotic contrast to the Thorne mansions. Tubes bubbled, lasers hissed, and classical music blared. A slender, middle-aged man with wild, silvering hair and safety goggles perched on his forehead rushed toward them, knocking over a stack of papers. This was Dr. Jian Zuo.
"Grandma Thorne! You brought her! Finally! I've run the DNA fragments from the sample Lucien's assistant managed to grab from her delivery uniform, and the results are inconclusive! I need fresh samples! Saliva, hair, maybe a tooth!" Dr. Zuo seized Anya's hand, his eyes shining with scientific mania.
Anya tried to pull back. "Wait, you took my DNA from my uniform? I have a right to privacy!"
"Privacy is a bourgeois construct, my dear!" Dr. Zuo declared, undeterred. He held her wrist up to a small scanner on the wall. A green light flashed, and a chime sounded—a specific, melodic chime that was instantly familiar to him.
Dr. Zuo threw his arms up in delight. "The Guardian Resonance Signature! It's identical to the trace energy we collected from the Qilin's favourite sleeping spot! You are definitely her, Anya! Magnificent! The cell turnover is accelerated, the bone density is anomalous, and your hair follicles show traces of… pure starlight!"
While Dr. Zuo was loudly proclaiming Anya's magnificent anomaly, a stern, rival scientist, Dr. Marcus Chen, walked into the lab. He was a Thorne Institute employee who had long been jealous of Dr. Zuo's free rein.
"Dr. Zuo," Dr. Chen clipped, looking disdainfully at Anya. "I must protest this security breach. You've brought an untested socialite into a secured lab based purely on Mr. Thorne's temporary delusion. Her presence is compromising the Alpha Project."
The Alpha Project was the institute's top-secret, military-grade AI initiative, and Dr. Chen loved to use its name to pull rank.
Madam Thorne stepped forward before Dr. Zuo could argue. "Dr. Chen, your concerns about security are valid. However, Dr. Zuo's latest discovery, Miss Anya, has already rendered your precious Alpha Project irrelevant."
Dr. Chen scoffed. "A pampered pet has rendered years of quantum computing work irrelevant? Impossible!"
Madam Thorne pulled a plain, metallic chip from her handbag and tossed it onto Dr. Chen's desk. "This is a tiny fragment of the Qilin's scale. Dr. Zuo found the sample three weeks ago. It was the only part of the Qilin we could recover after her disappearance five years ago."
She pointed to the complex matrix of wires and servers that housed the Alpha Project. "We fed the data from this single scale fragment into the system last night. In thirty minutes, the Qilin's trace energy solved the decade-old encryption problem that your team has been stuck on for three years."
Dr. Chen's face went pale. The scientific, intellectual humiliation was total.
"The Qilin's wisdom surpasses human logic," Madam Thorne stated coldly. "And since Miss Anya holds the Qilin's soul, she is the key to our future, not your flawed AI. Effective immediately, Dr. Chen, you are reassigned to filing quarterly reports. You may keep your salary, but you will not approach Miss Anya, or any Qilin-related research, ever again."
Anya watched the destruction of Dr. Chen's career, her head pounding. The scent of ozone and science in the lab was clashing violently with the faint, persistent scent of jasmine and wet earth from her new silk wrap.
Qilin. Guardian. Starlight.
Suddenly, the fragmented memory of the swift shadow in the garden wasn't a shadow anymore.
She saw herself—four legs, covered in shining, dark green and gold fur, not running, but leaping across a massive stone wall. She remembered a voice, warm and low, calling her "Xiao Bao" (Little Treasure). She remembered lying curled up not on a white fur rug, but on a bed of cool, soft moss under an immense, ancient tree.
She stumbled, grabbing the nearest sturdy object—a lab bench. The world tilted.
"Grandma Thorne," Anya gasped, her voice raw. "The garden… it wasn't a cat's garden. It was huge. It had a tree. And someone… someone called me Little Treasure."
Madam Thorne's eyes widened, her composure finally breaking. She rushed to Anya, her voice laced with desperate hope. "The tree! What about the tree, my dear? What was it called?"
Anya squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her hands to her temples, trying to hold onto the fragment before it dissolved. The name… the name of the tree was…